(Newser)
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Krokodil—the Russian street drug with effects so horrific it makes meth look almost wholesome—may have already killed at least one person in the US, Time reports. A close friend of a man who died from drug abuse in the state last year said he had been using the drug, made from codeine mixed with ingredients like gasoline, and it "ate him from the inside out." Users of the heroin-like drug develop scaly green sores near injection sites, and in some cases, the flesh rots away to the bone.

An Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics spokesman, however, says there is no proof the drug has reached the state. "We see IV drug users with horrible infections on a daily basis," he tells the Huffington Post. "Infections from bacteria and dirty needles—that doesn't mean it's" the Russian drug, he says. There have also been unconfirmed reports of the drug surfacing in Arizona, Illinois, and New York, along with a rise in Google searches on how to make it, the International Business Times reports. (Read more Krokodil stories.)